Back in late January I had, what I’d hoped would be, my last gallbladder attack. I was being super duper careful of what I ate to insure that the gallbladder would stay quiet until surgery was possible. Last week I had my pre-op appointment to arrange my surgery (which is on May 1st thankfully) and suddenly, my gallbladder has sprung into action! It is as if it heard that its days were numbered or something and decided to get the most out of its life my acting up like crazy. Since I scheduled the surgery, only one night has passed that I did NOT have an attack. My diet has not changed, I still eat fewer than 10 or so grams of fat per day, but the attacks keep on surprising me no matter what I eat (or don’t eat). Initially they were okay. Mild, uncomfortable, short. Nothing I couldn’t deal with. Then last night I got kind of scared. I had the attack that lasted for about 3 hours then it seemed to die down. But it never died down completely and just settled into this uncomfortable painful thing that was just painful enough to keep me awake and worried. I was awake until about 4:30 last night. The attack ended up lasting eight long hours. I was planning a trip to the ER if it wasn’t over by 6:30. So anyways, it sucks. These last ten days until surgery are appearing very long…

On the positive side, nursing is the best diet aid ever!!! Bradley and I started up our diets again last week. We got over the sugar and started exercising. I was expecting the usual loss of about a pound a week, but I feel like I am on the Biggest Loser or something! I am shedding weight like you wouldn’t believe. This first week I’ve lost seven (yes seven) pounds! Wow! My whole goal was ten pounds by the end of June. So far, I think I’ll be able to do it! Wink wink. Nursing takes about 500 calories to sustain and I am on a 1700 calorie diet. I usually don’t get that far and hit about 1300 calories, so minus the 500 I am at about 800 calories for me per day. I read about it, and most books are encouraging of using nursing to your dieting advantage. I think I’ll nurse forever! Yeah!!!

Jude hit his one month mark on Saturday. It is hard to believe that we no longer have a newborn, rather a one month old baby at this point. Sleeping is getting better and better. We usually get a four hour sleep first off, then we’re woken about every two hours to nurse. That’s fine, as long as I get to sleep at the same time as him. Otherwise I get pretty tired. He is taking in the world now, studying it, looking at lights and faces. At his one month appointment he weighed nine pounds 2 ounces and has grown a quarter inch. He is in the 30th percentile for both height and weight, which is weird since Gigi was always in the 70th to 90th and we are not tiny people.

Gigi has been struggling a bit with ‘Mommy Time’ deficiencies. She has made a lot of noise about how Jude gets all the attention while she gets none. It is interesting how she perceives this wrong. And almost impossible to right it in her eyes. If I am nursing Jude, she perceives that as choosing to be with him instead of her. Tough situation that we just have to deal with. Then she is doing this passive aggressive thing where she says she just won’t be in bed with me, she’ll sit on the floor or something ridiculous. While annoying and difficult, I can appreciate that she is not acting out in other ways against the baby. Balancing the two is proving to be challenging. Going back to work in a few weeks will be an interesting experiment…

I think that’s it. While challenging, things seem to be going well for the most part. The ten inches of snow and the power outages made life interesting and exciting for us. The carport partially collapsed with all of that wetness, but Bradley is on top of it and fixing it. What a guy! Please, let spring come now!

Have a splendid week,
Tamara


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